The test itself fascinates me. First of all, it doesn’t make any claims about quality or fairness, or even sexism per se; the two women could be delivering cliche lines about tax law while wrestling in mud. It’s also frightfully easy to make a movie that passes the test; just stick in a few minutes of mud-wrestling tax chat and proceed with the rest of your film as-is. (Yes I am looking at you, Star Trek.) It also shouldn’t be construed as an ultimate benchmark of feminism, because it’s possible to make a film that doesn’t pass but still treats women as first-class characters.

That said, the subset of my favorite sci-fi and fantasy films that would pass the test is an amazingly short list. Some of the dropouts (like 2001 and Moon) have few or no female characters, and some (like Star Wars and The Princess Bride) don’t have any conversations between women. In fact, finding a single genre favorite that passes starts to challenge my memory. Brazil? Nope. Raiders? Nope. Back to the Future? Nope for all three. Lord of the Rings? Heh.

Then I get to Serenity. OK, here we go. Joss Whedon, strong female characters, more than one on screen at a time. A cinch, right? Well… I’m trying really hard to remember a conversation between any two women in the film, and it just isn’t working. I’ll probably go through the script scene-by-scene just to check, but it should just pop to mind, right? Reverse genders and it’s obvious: Mal talks to the Operative on more than one occasion, Book and Mal share a nice moment, the Operative shares exposition with that functionary guy–and then impales him, but it still counts.

I’ve heard tell that the Alien movies qualify, but I must admit that I haven’t seen them. As for the rest of my list… well, I guess there isn’t one yet. I can’t think of a single genre film I’ve seen that passes the Bechdel test. Can you?

Well, they spelled my name wrong, but the video is still pretty good. (Don’t worry, I’m as shocked as you are at how good I sound. They must have done some heavy editing to make me seem so coherent.)

It’s back to Middle Earth for Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and the boys from New Line. Finally, the years of disputes have ended, and the partners (including co-producer and co-distributor MGM) are gearing up for two new Hobbit movies.

Jackson and his life/creative partner Walsh have always envisioned the big-screen adaptation of The Hobbit as two movies. The first would deal with the 80-year old novel. The second, imagined entirely by Jackson and Walsh, would link the conclusion of The Hobbit to the start of the first Lord of the Rings book, The Fellowship of the Rings. New Line and Jackson will develop the properties over the next year with hopes of entering into pre-production by 2009 for a 2010 and 2011 release.

So we can all do the dance of joy and then wait impatiently for 2010. Yays!

via Feministing

Let me know what you think of it.**

* Deana, basically
** only if you loved it

The bad news: It’s less than 16,000 words, around 85 pages. That’s probably too short to be a truly complete draft (there are lots of places where more dialogue or description is probably necessary), and it’s over 4,000 words shy of winning the Script Frenzy challenge. It’s the very last night of the month, and there’s no way I could add that much to the script in time to meet the deadline tonight.

Here’s the kicker: I don’t really want to, either. Sure, I could write a couple dozen pages’ worth of space monkeys attacking, but it just doesn’t feel worthwhile. Not the script itself; I’m immensely proud of completing it, and I think it could be pounded into something mildly entertaining with a few more drafts. I’m glad I spent some time this month working on it, but I’m also glad I didn’t spend any more time on it than I did. It’s been a busy month in all respects, and when it came right down to it I picked family, friends, other projects, and sleep (oh, that) over meeting a screenplay challenge.

From here… I’m not sure. I’m thinking of asking K to check it for embarrassing bits. If she doesn’t howl with laughter, I’ll post it in the writing section for your amusement.

Final word count: 15,741.

Unless that script is The Princess Bride.

If you haven’t seen that film, go watch it now. Now. I’ll wait. Done? Okay. Compare the scene in the fire swamp with the scene at the beginning with the water jug. Which one makes you believe that these two people love each other? Which one makes you wonder if it’s going to be a kissing book? Exactly. What’s the difference? In the fire swamp, the actors have a steady stream of dialogue and actions they can hang their emotions on, and the director has a million places to insert a hand-holding here, a quick embrace there, a significant look.

I did not, in fact, write a scene like that. However, the scenes I wrote were a lot more like that than the water jug scenes, so I’m hoping the audience won’t have to take it on faith that these two cardboard cutouts really are meant for each other. That will come in handy in the next few scenes when I pit them against each other.

Word count so far: 6,965.